


ad astra

by irene_addling



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain Marvel (2019), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Endgame Speculation, F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 19:40:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18079700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irene_addling/pseuds/irene_addling
Summary: Two captains meet on a bridge to the stars.





	ad astra

Carol likes Steve Rogers. 

Even though he’s swimming in grief—they all are—he’s kind, steadfast, steady. He reminds her of Lawson, the quiet, chin-up determination to fix things, even when how badly they’d been broken made him want to scream. None of the Avengers call him their leader—none of the ones that are left, anyway—but they all defer to him, and he leads well. He is gentle and never raises his voice, but Carol can tell that deep inside him, there’s a scream that’s clawing to be let out. 

She finds him on the deck of her starship one morning, when they’ve all sailed to find Tony Stark. He’s staring at a compass with two photos inside: a woman in a forties blazer and a gentle smile, and a man in a Wakandan sun wrap and wary eyes. 

He doesn’t bother to flip it shut, when she sits next to him, footsteps loud enough to announce her arrival. Maybe he’s been wanting to talk about it.

“People you lost?” She doesn’t need to say _to Thanos:_ nobody does anymore.

“Her, I lost a long time ago.” Cap runs a fond thumbnail over the woman’s face. “But he was—I’m looking for him.”

James Barnes, the Winter Soldier, the White Wolf. Carol knows many names for the man in the photograph, but not how to ask Steve about any of them. So instead, she pulls a frayed Polaroid out of her jacket pocket.

“This is Maria,” she says. “She’s the only person who could ever beat me in a race, and when we find her, she’s going to marry me.”

Find, not resurrect. And when, not if. She’d promised Monica that much already. 

Carol doesn’t know if she believes in silver linings, but if anything good came from Thanos, it’s that all of her and Maria’s worries—how much Carol put herself at risk, that only one of them was aging, that there could never be any official decrees or paperwork because Carol was, legally, dead—now they all seemed like nothing. When she found Maria again, she was going to wrap her wife in her arms and never let her go.

She waits for a while, for Steve to respond. Doesn’t look at his face when he wipes a tear.

“This is Bucky,” he says, slowly. “He could never beat me in a race, but he always used to cheer for me. He was happiest on a farm in Wakanda. And when I find him, I’m going to ask him…something.”

“Afraid of what he’ll say?”

“Afraid he won’t remember what to say.”

Carol smiles, not because she’s happy, but because she suddenly realizes, this is why she felt drawn to talk to Steve.

“I was, too.”

They sit for a while, after that. Outside, there are more stars than most of humanity could hope to lay their eyes on, but both of them are looking at the pictures in their hands.

“It took me too long to remember her. But I’m not letting a titan with a god complex take her away from me again. And you shouldn’t let him take yours, either.” She stands up and puts the photo away. Soldiers learn brevity, early in basic training. Cap will understand. 

“Carol?”

Steve’s voice sounds broken. Carol turns around.

“Yeah, Steve?”

“We’re gonna win this, right?” For the first time since she’s met him, Carol sees past the mask of sadness in his eyes: pure terror. He’s scared. “We’re going to fix this. We’re gonna find Tony, and we’re going to win.”

She wishes she could know. For his sake, and for hers. For the sake of everyone back on Earth: for the sake of the galaxy. For the sake of Monica, who’d lost her fiancee and one of her mothers to dust, and the second to deep space, the one who never aged and looked more like her sister than her mother now. Carol was ageless: if she was more bleak, she’d wonder if they were running out of time. But she refused to think that way. This was a world of demons, gods and heroes: it was big and vast enough to have a solution somewhere. And Carol would hate herself if she gave up before she found it. Not after it had taken so long to find Maria.

“Maybe. Maybe not.” She spins the ring on her finger, the one forged from the fire of a dying star, and dreams of putting a matching one on Maria's. “But we can’t win what we don’t fight for. And we’re going to put up a fight.”

He smiles at her, and she leaves him on the bridge, looking out at the stars.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally supposed to be an epilogue for a longer Carol/Maria thing I’m working on, but it ultimately didn’t fit the tone and come on SOMEBODY had to write this conversation, right? 
> 
> I've never read the comics and only seen the movie once, so my apologies if I got anything wrong re: Carol's aging situation and/or powers.


End file.
